The web is becoming increasingly complex. Design from a purely visual perspective is barely relevant. The topics that will set the trends in 2018 are different.

Conventional web design pretty much only exists in email newsletters. As if the nineties were not over yet, fixed definitions and tables are still used as layout frameworks. As a veteran, one can quickly become wistful. Nowadays, the design is more development than visual design, and the functionality is a lot more important than pure looks.

Thus, I don’t see our designs advancing in 2018 from a visual point of view, as minimalism has been established for years, and is unlikely to ever vanish due to the steadily growing mobile web usage. As a result, I don’t expect brand new trends and believe that trends we can already see will just increase in popularity. Examples being:

Bold, Flat Colors

Somehow, your design needs to stand out from the others. This results in a trend for bold colors. The term is a good description of what it’s about. Colors are used with such strong contrasts, that it almost takes courage to do so.

Mixing is possible as well, as long as the harmony of the overall image remains intact. The recently presented Mondrianism is an excellent example for that.

Soft and Complex Micro-Interactions

Regular readers might get the idea that micro-interactions are one of my favorite topics. In fact, there are tons of releases on the topic elsewhere (in German language).

Briefly summarized, micro-interactions are the essential interface elements between your visitors and your goals. As websites become increasingly similar, the micro-interactions are what sets you apart. Read the linked articles to learn more.

For 2018, I expect micro-interactions to become more complex regarding their visual presentation, and to feel even more seamless than they already do. This takes skillful animation and experienced handling of the related data transfer.

Individual Illustrations and SVG

SVG as a vector format is excellent for responsive websites, meaning it is excellent for all sites that are being developed now and in the future. Since the display does not have to be calculated based on pixels, SVG is equally sharp and crisp in all resolutions. Additionally, the SVG support in browsers is no longer a brake shoe.

While the aesthetic and technological quality of images used in web design has increased significantly, also due to the increasing number of professional free photo providers, this circumstance boosts the effect of uniformity, instead of reducing it.

Because of that, and the above-mentioned advantages of SVG, illustrations are increasingly popular with designers and their clients. A custom illustration suits the minimalistic designs, while still being different from the competition next door. This can’t really be said for photos.

Thus, in 2018, many designers will use illustrations. Depending on the demand, this is even cheaper than holding your own photo sessions. And all of us had to learn drawing as it is. Those who didn’t, collaborate with an illustrator.

More Authentic Photos

Since there is no lack of good photos, it will be hard to stand out. Of course, this also brings up the question if that is even necessary. If you conclude that you have to differentiate yourself via images, you won’t get around a different approach as it is.

Taking more authentic photos sounds like a plausible piece of advice. However, what does that mean? My advice is to consider pictures as stories. What you’re doing is storytelling with image material. Your photos don’t just show the product in a professional way; they tell a story that can but doesn’t have to be related to the product.

Authenticity does not always require professional (and expensive) settings, and can also be achieved with a smartphone camera. It all depends on what you want to present, and why.

More Interesting Typography

The future of typography is colorful. The so-called color fonts are responsible for this, and we posted an in-depth article on them here. Some even claim that colorful fonts dominate designs more than images ever did. Aside from the color fonts, we can also look forward to using variable fonts.

It’s Getting Colorful, Baby. (Photo: Pixabay.com)

Variable fonts can be manipulated in real time. Instead of multiple versions, like “thin” or “bold,” resulting in multiple files for marginal changes, variable fonts offer everything at once. If you want to learn more about that, I recommend reading this article.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Both VR and AR are nothing new. Here at Noupe, we touched upon this topic ten years ago already. The rapid technologic progress is the reason why this has only now become the near future. Current smartphones are the ideal platform for experiments with augmented reality. Just recently, the AR stickers in the Pixel 2’s Google Camera impress the masses. Pokemon Go also continues to be profitable.

Google Poly: 3D Objects From the Building Kit

Google supports designers and helps them get into VR/AR with its Poly platform, which we presented here. If you ask me, I think – of the two – AR has more potential, and I expect it to have a faster and more significant impact on the mass market. VR will remain a niche topic for a while.

Progressive Web Apps Instead of Native Apps

The trend away from native apps and towards progressive web apps (PWA) should continue as well. Around the same time last year, I wrote a more in-depth (German language) article on the topic here. This post has lost nothing of its currency.

Progressive web apps are web offers usable on mobile, which progressively adapt to the abilities of the device and browser they are used on. The more potent the device and the browser, the more performant the app. For the creation, open web standards are used exclusively. However, progressive web apps cannot access all device functions yet, making them unfit for some application cases. As PWA live and die by the browser support, every year is a new chance.

Speech as a Search Tool

With an expanded definition of design, SEO is moved into the focus as well. Here, we experience a veritable trend towards speech search. More and more users don’t use individual keywords for the conventional Google search, and instead, use entire sentences via different speech assistants.

Nice can, mostly used as a speaker. (Photo: Amazon)

Thus, there is no way to avoid preparing our content for this new way of searching. I told you everything you need to know about it in this article.

Conversational Interfaces

Conversation is a synonym for communication. At least, it’s its original form. As a result, we are very experienced with it and are accordingly natural when dealing with it. If we can solve something with a conversation, we will automatically prefer this form over all other options.

Thus, it only makes sense that “conversational” user interfaces are the future. The fact that “Conversational Interfaces” are not the default yet doesn’t prove that we do have something against it. In the past, the technological options just were not sufficient to realize a clean and functional interface. Once again, the progress comes in handy.

More on conversation interfaces, like Alexa and Co., as well as the increasingly more popular chatbots, can be found right here (in German language).

Artificial Intelligence

For the sake of completion, the buzz topic of the year shouldn’t be left out. I don’t think that elements of AI will be reflected in the everyday design or everyday development. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t lose track of the progress. Projects such as Google’s Deeplearn.js lower the entry level. Let’s talk about that at the end of 2018…

Libraries.io is a new project for web designers and developers. It helps you stay on top of libraries, modules, and frameworks from the open source ocean.

Libraries.io: Landing Page. (Screenshot: Noupe)

Nimble Search Engine Ignores Platform Borders

Libraries.io is growing quickly. By now, it already has more than two million open source projects in its portfolio, and it continues to grow steadily. The service integrates itself into almost three dozens of different package managers. Accordingly, the projects can also be filtered by these package managers.

As you’d expect from a search engine, Libraries.io also lets you search free text keywords. However, it may be more efficient to directly search for the license, or a programming language in conjunction with a license.

In this example, you’re searching for JavaScript projects that are distributed under the MIT license. This example gets you all WordPress projects in PHP under the GPL v2. I guess you get the idea?

Libraries.io: Search Result Page. (Screenshot: Noupe)

Libraries.io: Close Connection to Github

Libraries.io also latches onto Github. This begins with you being able to log into Libraries.io using your Github account. On some of the detail pages for respective projects, you’ll find Github statistics, and you’ll always find links to the repository, as well as other important information and links regarding the project. Speaking of an extensive all-round information is not an exaggeration.

Logging in with your Github account also gives you the advantage of being able to follow projects directly on Libraries.io. If you do that, you’ll be kept up to date with news on the projects you chose. This also works for platforms that don’t offer this functionality on their own. The integration with Github also makes sure that the lists of the most popular projects are calculated based on their respective Github status, meaning the number of stars and contributors.

The service provides its own API. So if you wanted to create an app based on the data from Libraries.io, you could do so.

Being a web developer is one of the most beautiful jobs there is, but also one of the most demanding. You need to stay up to date at all times and learn actively instead of resting on your oars. Adapting to new requirements is key. Basic SEO knowledge is required, and you need to acquire new techniques such as responsive web design. Being able to optimize websites is important, and of course, getting to know new working methods is vital. To ensure that you stay on top of the game, we’ve collected a list of the best tools and resources for web developers.

Lifelong Learning: Resources for Web Developers

Newsletter for Web Developers

These newsletters bring you the best articles on web development and performance and are editorially prepared. This way, you can be sure to only find useful things in your inbox.

freshbrewed.co – This newsletter about Front-end and UX design is published once a week.

Communities for Web Developers

Every web developer gets stuck at some point and doesn’t know how to continue. That’s when it is helpful to be able to talk to other people that can give support fast and unbureaucratically. Here are some communities specifically for web developers and designers.

Tools for Online and Offline Use: Resources for Web Developers

Website Speed Test Tools

A website’s speed is a crucial factor in its ranking in the Google index. Fast loading times often equal better bounce rates, a better general user friendliness, and higher conversion rates. Thus, I recommend using these free tools to test and optimize your website’s loading time.

Website Speed Test: The rather new speed test tool by KeyCDN with “cascade” display of the results and a preview of your website. Recommendable.

Google PageSpeed Insights: PageSpeed Insights analyzes your website and gives you many useful tips on how to improve the site’s performance.

WebPageTest: This tool allows you to test the performance of your websites from many locations on earth in real browsers like Firefox, IE, and Google Chrome.

Pingdom: One of the best tools to test a website’s loading time. Different locations can be set.

GTmetrix: Gives you an insight into your website’s speed, and a bunch of tips to help you improve it.

Collaboration Tools

These tools ease cooperation of teams that work on one commission together. By now, many teams consist of workers that live and work scattered all over the world. Keeping in touch and arranging with each other is of particular importance. These tools allow you to make cooperation and workflow significantly more efficient.

Slack: A messaging applications for teams working on a commission. The app promises to make your work life easier and more productive.

Trello: Trello is a flexible and visual way of organising teams. The software is based on »cards« that are commented and to which you can assign priorities. It’s simple and can be learned quickly.

Asana: With this collaboration tool, teams can keep an eye on their work and look into existing results. A perfect way to see what stage the project is in.

Jira: All members of your software team can plan their work, look at results, and release the software afterwards.

Code Sharing and Experiments

Sometimes, you might have a fruitful conversation with another developer on Skype or via Google Hangouts, and want to share some code so that your interlocutor can take a look at it. Of course, large team tools like Slack can do that. However, they make no sense when you’re not part of a team. There are a couple good, and fast alternatives. Sometimes, even quick experiments are crucial, which is why you’ll find tools for that in this list.

JS Bin: A tool to experiment with programming and markup languages. You can use HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Markdown, Jade, and Sass.

JSfiddle: A tool that allows you to test your JavaScript, HTML, or CSS code directly within the browser.

CSS Preprocessors

A CSS preprocessor basically consists of a scripting language that expands CSS and can compile to regular CSS. CSS preprocessors ease working with CSS. Here’s an article on the basics of Sass and Less.

Sass: A very mature, stable, and efficient professional CSS expansion.

Less: An expansion of CSS that is also backwards compatible. This makes learning it a cakewalk.

Stylus: A new language that provides an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way of generating CSS. Stylus supports both indented and regular CSS.

Front-End Frameworks

Working with frameworks is becoming more and more popular, as using a predefined frame, or a compact package can ease work significantly, and allows you to get to results faster. Usually, frameworks consist of some files and folders, like CSS, HTML examples, and JavaScript. Twitter’s Bootstrap framework is one of the most popular frameworks of them all and the foundation of many sophisticated websites. However, other frameworks also deserve to be tested.

Bootstrap: An HTML, CSS, and JS framework for the development of responsive, mobile-first websites.

Foundation: A family of responsive front-end frameworks that are supposed to ease the development of responsive websites, apps, and emails.

Semantic UI: A framework for the development of responsive websites with semantic, readily understandable HTML.

Uikit: A lightweight and modular framework for the development of fast, efficient web interfaces.

Git: Clients and Services

Git is a source code management system for software and web development. It offers distributed version control. Git’s advantages become the most evident when working in teams, as code changes can be traced back, and brought from the development to the live stage. It’s a way of minimizing chaos, and to make sure that nothing goes online until it was tested.

SourceTree: A free Git and Mercurial client for Mac and Windows. A Git client for teams – Bitbucket – is available as well.

GitKraken (Beta): A free and intuitive, fast client available for all platforms.

Tower 2: Version control with Git made simple. This is what this app promises to do. Only for Mac.

GitHub Client: An easy way of working on projects on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise.

In the past few years, web development has grown at a rapid pace, with new technologies, languages, and scripts coming into view. Plus, ever since the advent of HTML5, innovation in web development has become the norm, to the extent that even Adobe has been forced to eventually abandon Flash and embrace HTML5. So, what are the trends and changes in web development of 2016? This article attempts to answer this question.

Evolution of Responsive Design

Responsive design began as a trend for mobile-friendly design and development. With the rising numbers of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, responsive design grew in popularity, and today, it is hard to picture a website that is not responsive.

That said, in 2016, responsive design will grow beyond mobile devices. Now, we have Smart TVs as well as gadgets such as the Apple Watch or its Android pendants — web development is expected to cater to users of such devices too because all of these rely heavily on access to the internet. As such, responsive design will grow beyond just simple “mobile-friendliness” and start heading towards connected smart devices.

In-browser Development

When it comes to web development or any form of development or coding for that matter, most developers tend to have a set number of tools and workspace settings of their own. There are IDEs, libraries, frameworks, and so on. Desktop-based IDEs have been in vogue for decades now.

However, in the coming few months, cloud-based IDEs that run right within your web browser are expected to rise in popularity. The obvious advantage of such IDEs is that you do not need to install anything — you do not even need a very powerful processor, as any laptop or netbook capable of running a modern web browser will run such IDEs. With the growing ease of access to the internet, such as wi-fi in your local cafe or at the airports, cloud-based development tools are expected to grow further, and this will lead to more and more developers turning towards in-browser development.

Dominance of JavaScript

JavaScript is all geared up to still remain the language of web development in 2016. In fact, Matt Mullenweg even urged WordPress developers to learn JavaScript well, in his State of the Word 2015 address.

JavaScript might probably not be used for everything that you can think of, but it is surely going to improve and build upon a lot of things. For instance, with REST API being a part of WordPress, it is only a matter of time before we see better integration of JavaScript apps with WordPress projects. Similarly, libraries such as Meteor and AngularJS will continue their steady rise to popularity, and JavaScript will soon power more and more of the internet.

Ad Blockers

Advertisements have been among the primary sources of revenue for a lot of brands, both online and offline. The best part about the internet is that as a user, you can block obtrusive, specific or all of the ads using ad blockers. With more and more publishers coming up with newer methods of serving ads, the importance of ad blockers is expected to rise.

Smashing Magazine recently did a story about the ad blocking trends in the online publishing world. You should read that article to learn more about it. However, the trends and changes in paradigm are already visible: this month Opera has become the first mainstream web browser to bundle a native ad blocking tool in its Developer Edition. It is only a matter of time before other web browsers will follow the model, and you can expect ad blockers in themselves to be a part of your Developer Edition web browsers soon, as well as newer coding methodologies coming up to both improvise as well as avoid ad blockers.

ZURB’s Foundation

The Foundation framework by ZURB needs no introduction, as it has been a popular entity in the web development world for years now. However, the Foundation for Apps framework is expected to grow in 2016.

Basically, Foundation for Apps is a front-end framework that lets you create fully responsive web applications.

To quote:

Foundation for Apps is a framework that allows people and companies to build well-designed future-friendly web apps. Foundation for Apps is designed to help you quickly prototype and build responsive web applications by using leading technologies like Flexbox and Angular.

Foundation for Apps is especially interesting on account of its bundled components, such as Motion UI, which is a simple SASS library that lets you create CSS animations and transitions and integrate them seamlessly into your websites and projects. Motion UI has been in vogue since 2015, and this year too the trend will be no different.

More Reliance on Frameworks!

As web development grows and we see young coders enter the market, the popularity of frameworks is expected to rise as well.

Agreed, many purists and old-school coders tend to prefer a framework-less coding atmosphere, and they do have their reasons for that. However, frameworks make lives easier for many developers, especially if time and/or resources are scarce, and as such, with one developer focusing on more than one project at a time, the importance of frameworks in web development can only be expected to grow, and not to diminish anytime soon.

What do you think of these web development trends and predictions for the coming months of 2016? Share your views in the comments below!

How did date validation work in JavaScript again? Do you remember how to check if an object is empty? Sounds very specific, doesn’t it? It’s good this way, as the very specific questions are much more frequent in a web developer’s everyday work than the question which of two frameworks is better in general. The new search engine Co.cycles is a very interesting helper for these everyday issues.

Forums: Classic Developer Help

I’m a member of a variety of forums, all of which deal with questions on front-end development, and I’m a huge advocate of using forum features ;-) On the base of helping and getting helped, I’ve been able to deal with plenty of problems that I couldn’t have solved alone, or at least not as fast, without forums. However, you can generally say that it becomes increasingly harder to find help in forums the more specific the question gets. Help found via the search feature often needs to be re-interpreted to suit the particular case.

That’s why it’s great that a new search engine for freely available code joins the valuable help base that can be received via forum interactions. Co.cycles is the name of the search engine. As it closely resembles Google, you won’t encounter problems using it. Its goal is to become an indispensable companion for today’s web developers.

Co.cycles: Developer Help on Steroids

Currently, Co.cycles can only help out with questions on JavaScript. It will look for projects that are similar to the search request, as well as for fitting code snippets, functions, and so on. Expansions for languages like PHP and Ruby are in the works.

Using Co.cycles is simple. It works exclusively on the base of free-text search phrases, just like its Californian role model. To ease getting started, you’ll instantly find suggestions on valid search phrase formulations next to the search bar as soon as you access Co.cycles.

As soon as you enter and send off the search term, the similarities to Google end. The result page is far more communicative than what you’re used to. On the left side, you’ll find projects that deal with the search term, in the center you’ll see the exact function you searched for in a complete source code example, and on the right, there’s explanation on what, why, and how.

This will help you get going fast, which should accelerate your workflow massively as the results are exactly what you were looking for. Just search for the following:

Mandrill, the popular transactional email service, has recently announced that it will discontinue its free tier plans soon.

After March 16, new users will be required to create their accounts through MailChimp, whereas existing users will be required to merge their accounts with MailChimp. Essentially, this means users might need to pay $20 or more per month for transactional emails. The deadline for this is April 27.

Of course, the other plans at MailChimp will continue to be on offer. In essence, Mandrill will now be a paid add-on for MailChimp, wherein you can use this addon to send transactional mails. Here is how they are defining transactional emails:

Transactional emails (are) like password reminders and the myriad email notifications you get after making changes to online accounts.

Many web developers use Mandrill to deliver such emails on their projects, such as WordPress websites. This ensures that server resources are not wasted in sending emails and handling spam, etc.

However, after this announcement, most developers who are on a budget might be forced to seek an alternative. Amazon SES is one such service, that lets you send 62,000 emails per month, as long as you send them via an Amazon EC2 instance.

There are other options out there as well; but Mandrill has so far been the most popular one, with superb integration among other services (such as WordPress plugins).

If you are a Mandrill user, how do you intend to handle this new change? Will you be paying for transactional email delivery (assuming you were on the free plan)? Or are you in pursuit of an alternative? Share your views in the comments below.

On my daily deep dives into the web of webs, it’s natural that I come across countless corals, sea creatures, particles, and everything else that dwells down there. I thought you might be interested in what I keep in my virtual trawl. As I’m a selective fisherman, the bycatch is rather small. These design assistants fell into my trap.

Tools for Design and Development: More Chaff Than Wheat

Separating the chaff from the wheat is becoming increasingly more challenging. At least, that’s how I feel after all these years with Noupe and my other endeavors. Maybe I’m just growing old. But don’t you also feel like the amount of tools is always growing and the time periods between them evolving become shorter? You might be able to keep an overview, but separating the useful from the useless, or, at least, the interesting from the boring is becoming more difficult.

In my opinion, the following five, rather fresh, contributions from the sea of the design and development branch are worth mentioning:

StickyStack.js: OnePager as a Card Stack

StickyStack by Mike Zarandona is a jQuery plugin that helps you make your website seem like a slideshow. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about the powerpoint style of the 90s, but rather about the effect that’s also used on parallax websites which causes the content that scrolls in to overlay the previous content, like moving a card above another. When using StickyStack.js, a new card will always slide in when the previous one has reached the upper border of the viewpoint. Simple, but clever.

Colofilter.css: Colorful Filters in Duotones

Lucas Bonomi from Paris brought us a stylesheet which you can use to lay awesome color filters on photos, and make them change dynamically. To do that he uses CSS filters and the mixblendmode, which is why users of Microsoft browsers, Opera Mini, and Safari are excluded. A polyfill is in the works, until then, these users only see unfiltered images.

Heisenberg Ipsum: Dummy Texts for Fans of Breaking Bad

The classic Lorem Ipsum is still the most used dummy text around the web. It doesn’t get much more boring than that. It’s no surprise that plenty of developers have thought of alternatives. One of them is called Heisenberg Ipsum, an Ipsum generator for fans of Breaking Bad. Choose your favorite character, set a length for the Ipsum, and instantly receive a hefty text passage.

Feature.js: Browser Feature Recognition Fast and Safely

Feature detection is the safest way of only serving the users the functionality that they actually have, and using a fallback for the features that aren’t supported. Feature.js offers rather reliable services and weighs only 1kb. The developer Viljami Salminen from Menlo Park in California provides working solutions, as well as a proper documentation with plenty of examples alongside his small JavaScript, which doesn’t have any other dependencies. That’s a rare sight these days…

Codepad: Helper for Stuck Developers

Codepad is a new venue for developers and designers. Here, you can share code snippets, and request comments on them. Maybe your solution isn’t the best one after all. Other users help you, and you help them. Codepad is about giving and taking. Just like back then, during the good old BBS days. Codepad deals with all common, and less common (hello there, ColdFusion) languages.

A free online tool gives a clear overview of all problems that your CSS stylesheets may or may not contain. This quickly shows you what you need to work on. Test my CSS also informs you of why each problem is a problem and gives advice on how to remove it. All you need is the URL of the stylesheet to be inspected.

A Long Time Ago, When Rubber Boots Were Still Made of Wood

Of course, everything was better back in the days. Back then, you’d rewrite your CSS a couple of times and pay attention to cleanness and best practices as much as possible. Then the project, oh, what am I saying, the projects started growing. In the daily mess, one client wanted a change to be made here, another client wanted it there. Quickly, the clean file turned into a more or less chaotic melange of one, or like in most cases, multiple stylesheets. And as if this wasn’t bad enough, let’s not forget the cases in which we had to take over other designer’s projects, but were not allowed to reconstruct them entirely.

When looking at my projects, I have to admit that the some of the used stylesheets are older than ten years by now. Of course, they work, but they are certainly far away from optimal. But who needs optimal results anyways? That’s what you say to yourself because you despise the work. But if there was a tool that pointed at all the problems, wouldn’t that be motivating? For me, it definitely is…

Test my CSS: Just do it Better

Test my CSS is an online tool developed by Luke Fender. It runs under the liberal MIT license. Fender uses Maciej Brencz’ Analyze-CSS, which is also free to use and only requires you to attribute.

Using Test my CSS is extremely simple. All you need to do is enter the URL that leads to the stylesheet, and Test my CSS directly loads and analyzes it. This is fast and uncomplicated.

As a result, you’ll receive a commented list of all the problems in your stylesheet. Alongside the list, Test my CSS tells you why it considers each markup a problem, and what can be achieved by editing it.

Additionally, Fender’s tool offers background information like tips and tricks on optimal CSS markup in different scenarios. Under the menu item “Examples”, you’ll find examples of big provider’s stylesheets with respective analyzes. As you can see, they put on their pants the same way you do ;-)

Test my CSS costs nothing, except your time, but even this only to a minimal extent. In return, you receive good reference points that help you optimize your stylesheets. Definitely, check it out – even if you think your CSS is state of the art.

Starting with version 49, Chrome supports custom properties, namely CSS Variables. Now, another central element of professional programming is ported to the browser without any additional requirements.

Variables: Central Element of Structured Programming

Variables are an irreplaceable part of professional programming. Just imagine having to manually redefine the values for every single application area instead of having them managed as variables from one central spot. Searching and replacing things, if necessary, would take a bunch of effort even with professional development tools. However, until now, this procedure was inevitable when using CSS.

Only since Chrome 49, Google’s browser supports variables in the shape of CSS custom properties, also when it comes to the creation of stylesheets. As expected, this is certainly useful. You won’t want ever to miss it once you’ve gotten used to it.

CSS Custom Properties: This (and More) Can be Done With CSS Variables

CSS Custom Properties are useful for many purposes. An instantly recognizable example is the page-wide alteration of color values. CSS itself is already a relief in this regard. Thinking back on my first design in the 90s, I still feel uneasy today. Without CSS, I used to newly place colors on every single HTML element. When the client changed the color set, I was busy for multiple days, trying to find and replace all the values manually.

But even with CSS, altering elaborate color schemes can become confusing rather quickly. Here, CSS variables are a massive aid. For the visual reader type, I’ll simply integrate the GIF that Google has used in its Chromium blog to announce the new features here:

Google has recently open sourced its testing framework for iOS app development, and you can start working with it right away. Named EarlGrey, this framework comes with several features suited for iOS app development.

Google has been making use of EarlGrey iOS testing framework for the development of several apps for iOS devices, including YouTube, Google Photos as well as Google Calendar. EarlGrey comes with built-in synchronization and extensible components, making it easier for iOS developers to work with element selection and interaction. To quote the Google Developers blog:

Brewing for quite some time, we are excited to announce EarlGrey, a functional UI testing framework for iOS. Several Google apps like YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Photos, Google Translate, Google Play Music and many more have successfully adopted the framework for their functional testing needs.

This is not the first time that Google has open sourced a framework meant for mobile app development. Earlier, it had released j2objc, a toolkit that lets developers convert their JAVA code to Objective C, possibly with the intention of porting existing Android apps to iOS. Clearly, Google does realize the growing importance of iOS devices, and is keen on tapping the iOS app development domain.

The small JavaScript Loud Links adds sounds to your website by making links and other elements audible via HTML5 audio elements that will provide audible feedback on click or hover. All you need for that are sound files as MP3 and OGG. The solution works on all common browsers.

Sounds and Websites: A Question of Taste

Of course, of course. You don’t need to say it. Sound on a website is so 90s and it was annoying back then already. I know this opinion and it can be justified as well. However, using sounds can be also justified on many websites. Here at Noupe, we’ve just recently dealt with the topic in a more general way.

Loud Links is a small JavaScript from the digital pen of the Rotterdam-based designer and UX developer Mahdi Al-Farra. Mahdi starts something he calls weekend projects on a regular basis, and Loud Links is one of the thoroughly interesting results of these rush jobs.

To say it right away, Loud Links doesn’t want to flood your UI with music. It has only been created to set sounds for interactions. Precisely said, Loud Links can only add sound to two different states. While you can generally apply Loud Links to any element on your website, the sounds will only ring while clicking or hovering over an element with the mouse.

The JavaScript library creates an HTML5 audio for the respective marked element, and uses MP3/OGG files to play the respective sound. If you own fitting sound snippets, using Loud Links is very easy. A plethora of snippets can be found in the depths of the web.

Loud Links: How to

If you want to use Loud Links, you need to create a folder named sounds in your website’s root directory. Within this folder, create two more folders named mp3 and ogg.

After integrating the JavaScript into your HTML document the usual way, mark the links of other elements that you want to add sound to with the class loud-link-hover or loud-link-click. Using the HTML5 data attribute, you can add the specific sound without entering the file extension. This means, instead of sound.mp3, you only need to enter sound.

I’ll give you two examples:

or

That’s it. From now on, your website will give audible feedback on the interactions.

Loud Links is available for free download on Github. Unfortunately, Mahdi didn’t specify a license yet, so I can not say whether you can use Loud Links for commercial purposes or not. However, I would be surprised if it wasn’t the case. Just to be safe, ask Mahdi before you use it commercially.

Node.js has been growing in popularity over the past few years, and it has become one of the most well known choices for server-side JavaScript.

Recently, the Node.js Foundation, an impartial foundation hosted by The Linux Foundation to promote growth and better usage of Node.js framework, has announced that it intends to bring Express within the foundation for incubation.

Express is a popular third-party package for Node.js that is generally used for building web and mobile apps. It has been downloaded over 50 million times, and owing to its simplicity Express is generally the starting point for most new Node.js learners.

By bringing Express within the Node.js Foundation for incubation, the Foundation aims to streamline its development. Express is expected to be developed as an independent entity within the Node.js Foundation, with a separate team of developers and maintainers working on Express.

This news comes shortly after the fact that StrongLoop, the company that has so far maintained Express, was recently acquired by IBM. This led to speculations that Express might either be abandoned, or become proprietary. But now that the Node.js Foundation will be incubating Express, it is expected to remain open source and in active development.

Furthermore, many other frameworks, such as KrakenJS and Sails.js too rely on Express, and as a result, its curation by Node.js Foundation will be helpful for JavaScript development overall.

Some days back, we reported that GitHub is contemplating offering better and more focused services for Enterprise users. While the direction of GitHub in relation to the target audience that it wishes to focus on is still unclear, GitHub Enterprise 2.5 is now available.

GitHub Enterprise 2.5 focuses on scalability and easier workflow management for development teams of any size. Now, even if your development team is over 10,000 strong, GitHub Enterprise can be used to collaborate easily and work on larger projects.

Among other things, GitHub Enterprise 2.5 now comes with:

Clustering framework, that lets you add users and coders to larger installations within minutes.

An easier way to cache intensive operations, so as to optimize performance and resource allocation even when working on larger applications.

A “preview mode” for the Protected Branches API, which allows administrators to keep track of the project’s scalability.

Authentication process has been improved and simplified, and SVN support has also been enhanced.

GitHub Enterprise 2.5 also comes with some minor design tweaks, especially in terms of navigation and page layout.

With the latest release of GitHub Enterprise, focus has been placed on pretty larger teams, as the concept of clustering works mostly for very large development teams and relies more on administrative resources for workflow management. Beyond that, developers cannot force push or delete protected branches anymore, which further is useful if you have multiple instances running and a large development team with hierarchical setup.

If you have enabled automatic updates, your instance of GitHub Enterprise will automatically be updated to the new release. Also, you can read the release notes on this page, or learn more about GitHub Enterprise 2.5 here.

According to several popular reports around the web, it seems like GitHub is having internal issues about the direction in which the company should go forward. This news comes shortly after the famed open letter, which addressed the manner in which GitHub has been treating the non-premium projects hosted through it.

The debate seems to revolve around two heads: on one hand, the upper management of GitHub is keen on focusing more on enterprise contracts, whereas there are some at GitHub who wish to develop the service to make it more suited for the average developers and coders around the world.

Of course, if either side wins the argument, it will mean a gigantic policy change for GitHub. Looking solely at the enterprise clientele would mean GitHub might lose out on its apex position as the developers’ best friend, whereas targeting less of enterprise and more of development would mean GitHub might face profitability issues somewhere down the line. It is also worth noting that GitHub has, so far, been profitable by offering solutions for enterprise clients, whereas keeping its services free for the average user.

Viewing these reports in the light of the recent open letter written by GitHub users, these internal debates do seem to have legitimacy. As a $2 billion startup, GitHub is surely not in the game purely for the sake of helping developers, and profitability does matter. However, GitHub’s fame rests quite a bit on the fact that it offers a good set of features and hosting options to users free of cost, and if it were to rethink its strategy and steer more towards paid enterprise offerings, the average developer might be compelled to seek an alternative.

To learn more about the background of these development, read the Dear GitHub open letter that addresses some of the key issues that developers face when working with GitHub.